As Comcast manages by means of the surprising and abrupt exit of NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, the corporate has put senior exec Mike Cavanagh on the controls on an interim foundation.
Cavanagh, who was promoted final October to president of Comcast, will play a central function in guiding the manager changeover and attempting to maintain NBCU on the right track. Though well-known and revered in company and monetary circles, the Philadelphia-based exec has a a lot decrease profile in Hollywood.
The sudden new duties are touchdown on Cavanagh’s plate simply months after he earned an necessary vote of confidence from CEO Brian Roberts and the corporate’s board of administrators. His promotion from CFO to president made him the primary individual to carry the title exterior of the Roberts household, and together with the brand new title got here a contract extension by means of 2027.
Cavanagh joined Comcast as CFO in 2015, after working for 20 years in monetary providers, together with stints at JPMorgan Chase and the Carlyle Group.
Selling from inside has been an indicator at Comcast greater than at many media corporations, and the corporate has a bench of candidates who’re anticipated to get a glance. An individual accustomed to the interior deliberations, nonetheless, emphasised to Deadline {that a} formal search course of has not but been initiated. Cavanagh is seen as a extremely succesful operator steeped in NBCU’s operations, and nobody is speeding to swap in a brand new chief within the speedy aftermath of Shell’s gorgeous exit.
Ralph Roberts (Brian’s father) based Comcast in 1963 after shopping for American Cable Methods, a 1,200-subscriber supplier in Tupelo, MS. It formally took the title Comcast in 1969, placing down company roots in Philadelphia, and shortly thereafter grew to become a publicly traded firm. Comcast went on to amass management of NBCU in 2011 and full possession in 2013. Though a wall of skepticism surrounded the transaction on the time, it has paid dividends over time, changing into an necessary company pillar throughout a decade of decline for the standard cable enterprise. In contrast to AT&T’s spectacular misfire in buying Time Warner in a bid to marry content material with distribution, Comcast’s addition of NBCU has been a largely constructive expertise.
The guardian firm and NBCU don’t lack for inner candidates for Shell’s job. Together with the NBCU chief, key enterprise leaders of different Comcast divisions embody Dana Robust, head of Sky, and Dave Watson, head of Comcast Cable. NBCU itself has quite a lot of veterans within the senior exec ranks, amongst them Donna Langley, chairman of Common Filmed Leisure Group; Matt Strauss, chairman of Direct-to-Client and Worldwide; and Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCU Tv and Streaming.
As president, Cavanagh has strengthened his ties to CEO Brian Roberts, typically channeling the pondering of the nook workplace by commenting publicly a few vary of matters, leavening his strategic acumen with dry wit. Final month, for instance, he mentioned at a Wall Avenue convention that the corporate could be “completely happy” to promote its one-third stake in Hulu to Disney, which owns the remainder. At a distinct convention in 2022, he supplied a characteristically colorful-but-inside-the-lines reply when requested concerning the influence of turbulence within the media panorama, from streaming’s convulsions to home windows debates to the erratic promoting enterprise. “Not one of the upheaval out there’s inflicting anyone inside our firm to run round with their hair on hearth questioning ought to we modify plans,” Cavanagh mentioned. “We bury our heads and go do what we all know we have to do to ship nice outcomes organically over the following bunch of years.”
Whoever finally ends up taking the reins at NBCU might want to put streaming on the heart of their strategic imaginative and prescient for the corporate and it’s not a simple puzzle to unravel. Peacock, the corporate’s 3-year-old entrant within the direct-to-consumer race, ended 2022 with 20 million paid subscribers and has regularly gained traction after a sluggish begin. Shell presided over a pivot towards its premium subscriber tier after it started by emphasizing the free, ad-supported primary stage of service. Cavanagh declared 2022 the 12 months of “peak losses” for Peacock because it targets profitability by 2025.
The long-term destiny of NBCU as a subsidiary of Comcast can be hanging within the steadiness, although Cavanagh and different execs have steadfastly refused to handle it. The corporate has surfaced in quite a lot of M&A discussions involving corporations like Roku, WWE and Digital Arts and its $40 billion acquisition of Sky in 2018 and smaller offers for Xumo have proven it has a wholesome deal urge for food. Many Wall Streeters see it as a possible dance associate with Warner Bros Discovery provided that each face challenges funding their streaming ambitions whereas additionally managing declining legacy TV property.
Jeffrey Wlodarczak of Pivotal Analysis Group is one believer within the WBD mixture situation, and thinks that may very well be the capstone of a run of different offers. “We proceed to count on Comcast to enter into acquisitions which can be extra more likely to skew to the content material aspect of the enterprise (partly as a result of there are not any distribution property on the market) with a WBD deal in ’24 remaining a practical risk,” he wrote in a current word to purchasers.
Billionaire John Malone, the architect of the $43 billion merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia, prompted a wave of NBCU merger hypothesis in 2021 after that deal was introduced. He referred to as it “the pickle out of the jar” in an interview with CNBC. Elaborating, the WBD board member mentioned he had mentioned quite a lot of eventualities with Comcast’s Roberts and the pair concluded that “every kind of relationships may very well be contemplated between this enterprise that we’re creating and Brian’s enterprise,” pending regulatory approval.